Thursday, May 3, 2007

Although this story is somewhat old, I was reminded of it from a post on Free Exchange by someone named "cps" who I am not sure should be believed, but since I think that he spent time in Utah fighting crazies, I will give him the benefit of the doubt...[1]

Anyways, while the Free Exchange story was about the latest installment of the Bush Administrations' game called "Finding the perfect fox for this particular henhouse", the post links to a story about Ward Connerly's latest attempt to find states to continue his crusade. Having just fought against one of these disasters in Michigan, I hope that the people of the states of Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Oregon, South Dakota, Wyoming and Utah (alright, I only really reserve hope for rizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Oregon and South Dakota)start thinking about this campaign early and, for heaven's sake please at least force a real discussion about race and gender and not be so timid. This is their goal, to make it a political campaign:

"'He [Connerly] will seek to divide each state and will generally be successful,' said Waymire [Connerly's spokesman on the Michigan campaign], who called Connerly 'a brilliant political strategist.' He added, 'There is no good to come out of this, and nobody benefits except for Ward Connerly and his association.'"

...and now I think I've pretty much convinced mysel that Prop 2 opponents ought to talk about race. Here's the thing. The core of the argument against affirmative action programs is the claim that race doesn't matter in America. That claim happens to be false, but when supporters of affirmative action avoid talking about race, they themselves make it seem as if it were true. I mean, if we can have a debate about affirmative action without mentioning race, how could it possibly be true that we ever need to think about it?

So, please, please, please, please have a real discussion about race in this country. Talk about Katrina; talk about black male incarceration rates; talk about school quality differences; hell, talk about NBA officiating but just have a real conversation. If you do have the conversation, you may win or you may lose the ballot initiative, but at least you are discussing one of the fundamental inequities in American society. But if you insist on following a strategy with an 0-3 record, you lost even the opportunity to really talk about fundamental inequality in America.

[1] If this is, in fact, untrue - I will be happy to delete this statement from this post.